2023-09-05 17:18:41
Because of the American actors’ strike, Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” ran in Venice without support from the two main actors. In theory, Cooper, who plays composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (“West Side Story”), could have come in his capacity as director, but he chose to show solidarity with his fellow protesters. At the same time, the absence of the cast was symbolic; the film seems strangely empty and soulless. Instead of comprehensible feelings, he uses cleverly staged assertions.
Not so Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla”, which premiered on Monday evening. The films are comparable in many respects. Both tell the story of male musicians in the 50s, 60s and 70s, alongside Bernstein Elvis Presley, for whom even the term star is too profound; they are legends. However, both films are also or primarily interested in the women at their side, Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) and Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). Coppola does so clearly and decisively, with Elvis as a shadow at the edge of the eyepiece long before he becomes a shadow of himself. In shots where both can be seen, the camera lingers on Priscilla in the middle, often lonely, brooding, while her husband is faxing at the edge of the frame. In “Maestro”, however, Cooper cannot decide. He seems too enthusiastic about his own role to notice how Carey Mulligan increasingly pushes to the fore as his sad, later cancer-stricken wife, but never really gets there because Cooper always jumps in between.
Also in both cases the focus is on the relationships. The drama of Bernstein’s marriage is his homosexuality. The drama of Presley’s marriage, the simplicity of the king, which keeps him captive, even when his stomach is swelling, in the tight corset of the misogynist zeitgeist. “You have to make a decision,” he says curtly over the phone when Priscilla, who is still at school, asks permission to work in a boutique in the afternoons. “Career or me”. Priscilla swallows and falls silent.
All eyes on her: Sofia Coppola also focuses on Priscilla in the turmoil
Quelle: Sabrina Lantos/© A24 Distribution, LLC
For a few years she has been living with him at his Graceland estate in Memphis. Like Leonard and Felicia, they met at a party, just not in New York, but in Bad Nauheim, which has gained little in terms of glamor since then. They are still half or whole children, she is 14, he 24. What would be a scandal today caused little more than frowns among Air Force officers. “Why can’t he find someone his own age?” asks the mother. “The girls jump at him,” the stepfather riddles.
Coppola does not criticize the young love in every respect
But you can also see that love seems deep and sincere, and Elvis is so well brought up to limit the initiation to a few chaste kisses despite massive rock stardom. The film, which is based on Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, suggests that sex came many years later. In the meantime, the couple bridges the gap with shopping trips and private photo shoots with the Polaroid camera, in which they act out all sorts of 50s kinks, nurse role-playing games and such. “Elvis poured his heart out to me,” Priscilla is quoted as saying. “His hopes, his fears, his loss of his mother. I was the one sitting there to listen to him, to comfort him. That was our connection. Even though I was 14, I was more mature in life than I’ve been in years.”
Coppola does not criticize the young love in every respect, let alone defame it. Lesser directors might have made it easier for themselves. The apple is rotten elsewhere: in Elvis’ condescension and paternalism. He showers her with gifts, expensive rings, clothes, cars, but considers them his private property. “There are so many girls who would like to share my philosophy and interests,” he explains to her in bed, his reading glasses on his nose, which in turn are stuck in some Eso nonsense book. Priscilla listens desperately to the yogi sermon for two seconds, then she screams: “I can’t take it anymore.” The singer’s philosophy and interests don’t go that deep after all. Shortly thereafter, his manager, aka “The Colonel,” calls and finds that spiritual self-study isn’t getting him on the charts. So there is a spontaneous burning of books before the next barbecue in the garden.
The whims of the king are fleeting. Affairs come and go, starlets from the films he makes between tours. Pregnant Priscilla sits at the breakfast table at home and cries into the newspaper. When she confronts him, he yells at her that it’s time to go to her parents’ house. A break would do them good. He usually calms down quickly: “I got my temper from my mother.” This is how misogyny goes at the height of the American century.
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Coppola stages all of this precisely without rubbing it in the viewer’s face too obtrusively. Elvis does have his good points, apart from his infinite talent, which is not explained here. Ultimately, he appears as a dumb boy who doesn’t know any better, whose drugs – fame is worse than pills and alcohol – have gone to his head and never left him. He gives her several guns. He doesn’t want her to come visit him anywhere. He only generously shares his pills with her. The first time, his childlike queen only wakes up after two days. Years later, when she leaves forever, it’s the other way around; he can hardly find the strength to raise his head. He lost himself in Las Vegas.
There are beautiful collages that recreate a world in time-lapse: china knick-knacks on the windowsill, gramophones, Chevrolets, quiffs, hair salons, nail polish, black maids named Alberta, and a Catholic school taught by nuns who are only too happy to play with Have Elvis photographed: “God is with you and your hips!” In the background music, too, the film clearly emancipates itself from Elvis, who in turn does not like the Beatles: “We are here in America, for God’s sake!”
It is precisely this America that shines in all its glory in “Priscilla”. We are at the zenith of the milkshake age. Freedom is sensational, that is, if you are a wealthy white man. Looking good doesn’t hurt either. While Elvis perishes between bell bottoms and headlights in Las Vegas, Leonard Bernstein pats the buttocks of a clarinettist in New York. Or he strokes a young conductor’s hair in the hallway. Carey Mulligan as Felicia also seems to have aged before her time. Already in her forties she resembles an old woman. As she slowly dies of cancer, Bernstein stands by her. In between he composes amusement and sacred things, fidgets at the conductor’s podium and in Studio 54, close to what Felicia once prophesied to him: “If you’re not careful, you’ll end up as a lonely old fag.”
Families in the spotlight
In worldbuilding, evoking a bygone era, Maestro is as compelling as Priscilla. In addition to the great backdrops and costumes, Cooper relies on black and white and the old television format 4:3. Coppola paints a southern world of rich green and tired brown. The Elvis Estate, which manages the rights to the singer’s work, has complained bitterly that the film is demolishing the monument. Coppola counters this and explains why the topic is so close to her: “I know from my family what it’s like to live in a family in the limelight. I know that as you grow up, people look at you in a different way. Also, I lived in a house with my father, who was a great personality, a great artist, and a lot of our lives revolved around him.” For years, she watched her mother try to find her own way.
Showing how young girls grow up is Coppola’s specialty, from “Virgin Suicides” to “Bling Ring” to “Marie Antoinette”. The portrait of Priscilla Presley is another sensitive triumph.
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